The Bowdoin College Museum of Art's permanent collection goes back to 1811, making it the earliest collegiate art collection in the United States. The bequest of James Bowdoin 3rd (1752-1811), who served as Thomas Jefferson's minister to France and Spain in the early 1800's (and for whose statesman father the college was named), bestowed 70 paintings and 141 drawings on this small but choice college. But it took almost another century before art crept into the Bowdoin curriculum, and the gift was fully appreciated. *** In the Walker Art Building opened on campus, given by two sisters, Harriet and Sophia Walker. Wishing to honor their uncle, Theophilus Wheeler Walker, a Boston businessman who had helped establish a modest at the college, they commissioned the prestigious firm of McKim, Mead & White to design the new building. The firm did a splendid, all-out Beaux-Arts job, including a copper dome and the placing of four murals by prominent artists of the period in the rotunda.'http://library.bowdoin.edu/arch/images/gallery/walker/walker.shtml